Running might not be the precise word I’m looking for, but it’ll do for now.

In June 2015, just as I was about to turn 45, I decided that it was time for a big change. Change doesn’t necessarily mean changing one thing, it might mean changing two or more things. I don’t know if choosing to run is a single change or if it’s one of many. At the back of my mind, I suspect the latter…more changes are afoot. Anyway, I digress.

On Thursday 11th June 2015, I started listening to a podcast. That podcast was the NHS Couch to 5k podcast. I was using my phone to listen to the podcast, I was pretty enthused after the first day. Couch to 5k is a series of podcasts covering 9 weeks of audio content designed to get you from nothing to running 5km three times a week. It’s a mixture of audio content and music to fill the gaps – you’ll find yourself walking for 60 seconds, running for 60 seconds, etc. – it’s a gradual programme that is designed to get you hitting 5km in 30 minutes. More “popular” phones have an app for the Couch to 5k series – I just downloaded the MP3 files and went from there.

I carried on for the next fourteen days, listen to week 1 and week 2 of the series. My podcast app didn’t show me all of the instructions, so I was running every day. It wasn’t until week 2 that I realised, I should have only run three times in week 1. I felt fine, I carried on. Rest days didn’t seem too important early on in the programme, however I have since made sure they are a regular part of my running. I’ve not gone more than 3 days without a run.

In the early days, was using Edomondo to track my running. Edomondo has a Windows Phone app (and an Android app and iPhone app) that captured my run details. It was fine, it provided me with most of the stats that I needed. I’ll be honest, I was a little green behind the ears (naive) as to what stats that I wanted or needed. Route recording via GPS, time per km and the overall time seemed to be the three most important to me.

At the end of July, picked up a Fitbit from eBay (you don’t need a link for that, right?) Fitbit has a Windows Phone app and a Windows 10 app. It ran on my desktop and the Surface tablet. It’s a wearable device, like a watch. It captures heart rate, calories spent, workout times and steps. It’s good, however it does leave a consistent rash on my wrist after 18-24 hours of wear – why these things can’t have metal straps like the Seiko watch that I wear almost constantly? Anyway, it’s a good device – a plaster fixes the rash issue.

Prior to a business trip at the end of August, I linked my Fitbit account to Strava. Strava is somewhat all encompassing. It sucks [most of] my Fitbit data into its own cloud and processes it from there. I say “most of” because a couple of my key runs are missing – I blame Fitbit for this, I can’t get to the data myself, so Strava has little hope. Strava doesn’t have a Windows Phone app, yet…which is a shame. I’ve tried both Fitbit web and Fitbit for Windows 10 in order to find the missing run(s), but I just can’t get the user interface to let me get there. Strava is very much fully featured and offers considerable integration with other fitness products and other platforms. Strava will look at your GPS data and compare it against other runners. Other runners may have run all or part of your route – it will then compare your run against theirs, at a “segment” level. Segments are short (roughly 1km) lengths that more than one person has run. Your time will be compared against others, you may hold the current record for a part of your run…at some point somebody might take that record from you! It could become pretty competitive! In my local area there’s what looks like a marathon runner working the routes – I stand little chance of beating him on anything, he’s usually 30-40%++ faster than me!

If you’re looking to start getting fit in 2016, I can recommend the NHS Couch to 5K programme. Once you get passed running for 18 minutes at a time, you’ll want to run with your own choice of music – that in itself is motivation enough! Early on in the programme, I was walking then running then walking. I chose to use my local primary school playground as the “track”. Local “kids” (neds) also used the playground and started mimicking my walking and running. Back then, they could take the mickey…they could outrun me…except the fat kid who looked like he was ready for a heart attack. It’s a different story now, the playground is a very short route…I’m sure I could outrun those neds now! Anyway, again, I digress – don’t let other people stop you doing what you want to do.

Six months of running has proven to be worth its weight in gold: the NHS Couch to 5k has proven its worth. By August 3, 2015, I was running over 5km, three times a week. On August 22, I ran my first 10km route. I’ve since covered 15km and look forward to completing longer routes. Now, whenever I walk somewhere, I want to break out in a run. Distances have become much shorter…I look at a 5km circle around my office, around my home…and see that as little more than walking distance. In June 2015 I was a touch over 12st in weight. Six months later, I’m sitting at a fraction under 11st – I can’t remember the last time my scales read “10st something”. Generally, I’m hitting three * 5km and a 10km each week.

Apart from running, my diet has changed too: I’m getting through five fruit/veg per day and six pints of water per day. Lunch consists of chicken/lamb and rice/couscous. I feel super healthy too. My lower body, hips to feet feels particularly healthy. I’m working on my upper body, but I do accept there’s work to be done there. Similarly, I’ve pretty much given up alcohol. I still have the odd pint, the odd two glasses of wine, the odd nip or two of whisky, but nothing regular. So much so, I can easily go a month between alcoholic drinks…water and squash seem to the the order of the day. I feel good for it too.

What a difference six months can make. Forget New Year’s Resolutions, start them six months early and reap the benefits during January!

A position has become available for a freelance PHP front-end developer to work on taking an existing project into deployment and go live.

The position will be based in Edinburgh – there will be a requirement to spend time in Edinburgh during the early stages of the project. After go live, there will be an on-going maintenance requirement and the distinct possibility of future work.

Ideally, experience with AngularJS, or if not, then similar front-end Javascript frameworks (e.g. Backbone, Ember)

Ideally, experience with Laravel, or if not, then similar modern PHP frameworks (e.g. Symfony2, CodeIgniter)

General knowledge of HTML/Javascript

Experience with version control systems (specifically Git)

Knowledge of CSS framework basics, Sass + Compass

In the first instance please reply to the e-mail address at the right hand side of this page (in the About Me box). Please include links to showcase work, evidence confirming your experience of the skills noted above (e.g. your CV), an indication of your daily rate and confirmation that you are eligible to work in the UK. References may be required.

People like free stuff. I do. You do. We all do. We go to conferences, we get free stuff. Sometimes we get high-value free stuff, sometimes it’s just cheap or useless free stuff. Either way, we strive to get our hands on it. It’s human nature to want something for nothing. Human nature can be meddled with. It can be coerced into playing a game. Make the offer of free stuff so good and people will part with personal information in the vain hope they receiving something for nothing. And make it the current “must have” or “in demand” gadget and you’re on to a surefire winner.

As an aside
I recall a time around 20 or so years ago. I was in a customer service position and I was about to tell a bunch of customers that the dinner they were expecting was going to be delayed. Knowing that I would receive “some grief” if I just told them their food was going to be another half an hour, so I figured out a different angle. I approached the table and announced “I have good news and bad news. The good news is…I have a free round of drinks for you…” – pause for effect – “…and the bad news is there’s a 30 minute delay on your food”. By offering free stuff first, I was able to make the bad news more palatable [sorry!] and in this instance, raise a little laugh. People like free stuff and they’ll put up with quite a bit if the free stuff is worth having.

Free stuff, just follow and retweet
Just before Christmas 2012 I spotted @wp_discovery appear on Twitter. Officially it joined Twitter on the 7th of December 2012. It went through a couple of name changes before settling on @wp_discovery, but that’s neither here nor there. They also muddled their location from Finland to the UK – a vague attempt to gather some authenticity I imagine.

I added them to a list in order to keep an eye on the tweets. It was a competition-style tweet stream, simply follow and retweet to be in with a chance of winning either Nokia Lumia devices or Microsoft Surface units. In the words of The Real Hustle: “if it sounds to good to be true, it probably is”. That was my first thought and was the reason I chose not to follow them or retweet their material. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, it appears my cold pricklies were correct.

What has been written so far?
I don’t plan to discuss the full story behind @wp_discovery, other bloggers have done excellent work in that space so there’s little point in repeating that information here.

Gary has done a great job keeping a log of the goings on relating to @wp_discovery’s actions.

In a nutshell
There’s not a shred of evidence that anybody who follows and retweets the @wp_discovery account has actually won anything.

The @wp_discovery account had been asked to provide lists of winners but has so far been citing “privacy” as the reason for not issuing said list.

Photographs tweeted from the @wp_discover account have also been seen used elsewhere – @wp_discovery claim they are listing the devices on eBay and that they can use the photos as they see fit.

They also latched on to a Windows Phone game and tried to use that to promote their Twitter feed.

Questions were asked about where the devices came from, answers were given…they were journalists and had lots of review kit to give away. A few folks hinted that review kit was on loan and rarely could be considered a gift. However, the following public didn’t really care, they wanted their chance to blag a free Nokia Lumia or a Microsoft Surface or a Microsoft Xbox+Kinect: people were blinded by the fact they had a chance to win nearly $1000 worth of prize.

This carried on for a few days…until it became clear that there were no prize winners and the draw mechanism was “time based”…entrants stood no chance.

A Different Angle
However, I do want to think about what has happened here from a slightly different angle.

The @wp_discovery account amassed a decent number of followers very quickly. In around ten days they gathered about 10,000 followers. Twitter should have noticed that and raised an alarm bell.

Once the account was noted as being a fake, initially on the 26th of December, but more so on the 29th, they lost a few hundred followers. Despite frequent retweets of warning messages, folks continued to follow them. That said, as of today 1st January 2013, the follower count has started to dip again. However their material is still be retweeted by many new followers. This leads me to believe that there’s a reasonable amount of “follower loss” vs “follower gain” – at the moment the losses are marginally more than the gains. Twitter should have noticed this pattern and a red flag should have been raised.

Many hundreds of the disgruntled followers and since unfollowed the @wp_discovery account, “reported as spam” and blocked it. Twitter should have noticed this and raised an alarm bell.

The @wp_discovery account has actively blocked any user who openly questioned their approach. Twitter should have noticed this and raised an alarm bell.

Looking at Twitter’s Rules, under Spam, there are a number of clauses that @wp_discovery may have fallen foul of:

If a large number of people are blocking you; I would expect a large number of users blocked @wp_discovery; it would be interesting to understand Twitter’s definition of a large number though.

The number of spam complaints that have been filed against you; Ditto for spam complaints

If you post duplicate content over multiple accounts or multiple duplicate updates on one account; there were significant duplicate updates which should have caught Twitter’s attention.

If you have attempted to “sell” followers, particularly through tactics considered aggressive following or follower churn;

Using or promoting third-party sites that claim to get you more followers (such as follower trains, sites promising “more followers fast,” or any other site that offers to automatically add followers to your account); a third party Windows Phone alias was used to attract followers and drive traffic to the third party’s Windows Phone game.

If you create false or misleading Points of Interest; @wp_discovery created a flurry of retweets around the notion that there were high-value prizes up for grabs

Looking at the “Content Boundaries and Use of Twitter”, it is possible that some of these boundaries have been breached too.

Impersonation: At one stage, their Twitter profile suggested they may have some soft of affiliation with Nokia.

Privacy: They followed Jenna Kate Kelly for a period of about two minutes, they then sent Jenna lurid direct messages. They denied sending her these messages, despite a number of witnesses and screenshots proving it!

Violence and Threats: What could be interpreted as threatening tweets were issued from the @wp_discovery account.

Copyright: The Microsoft “Windows 8” logo has been used as the @wp_discovery avatar. I know from personal experience that we, as app developers, are not permitted to use logos that are “too similar” to the Microsoft logo in Windows 8 apps that are submitted to the Windows Store.

And they clean up when a legal issue appears
As I was writing this, 1/1/13 at 22:15, I noticed @wp_discovery had begun to delete their tweets. They then posted a single tweet:

Which was then replaced with this one:

The bit.ly link leads to here: http://areon-development.de/?p=191. I’m not going repeat material that is already in Gary’s post on this matter. Suffice to say, @wp_discovery tried to use a Windows Phone game written by Areon Development in order to attract more followers. Areon Development clearly didn’t appreciate the association and pursued matters that led to @wp_discovery holding up their hands and walking away. That’s certainly the public statement that has been issued, I don’t think we’ll ever know the full ins and outs of it all.

What’s next?
Before they deleted their tweets, they did tweet this:

Now, I’m not suggesting that the @mplacetoday account is possibly their “next project”, but I would have to question why an account that was created on the 31st of December 2012 would warrant the attention of @wp_discovery? If somebody tells me otherwise, I’ll gladly remove this section from this blog post.

Moral of the story
It’s simple: if something seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Any Twitter stream or web-site that offers Nokia Lumia 920 phones, Microsoft Surfaces, Xboxes and Kinects has to have some form of reputation. They should also have some terms and conditions governing how you may enter their competition and how they’ll go about effecting the draw. There will probably be issues relating to where they will ship the prize to (e.g. some countries may not be eligible). Importantly, there will be a publicity or privacy clause – most competitions will expect you to be publicly ecstatic about your win, but they will give you the option of privacy should you wish it. @wp_discover had none of these in place…apart from assuming all supposed winners wanted 100% privacy.

They duped thousands of followers into thinking they stood a chance of winning a high-value prize. They were claim to have 5 phones and 2 Surfaces in their draws. Even as the follower count increased, 5 chances out of 9,000 or 10,000 has fairly good odds. At one point, near the end of their flurry of activity last month, they were suggesting anybody who asked could have a phone, any phone, just ask! I know that some “you’re a winner” direct messages were sent out, however as Gary explained in his post, @wp_discovery weaseled out of shipping prizes using a variety of tricks.

The upshot of it all was this: no real winners, merely folks who thought they had won something – @wp_discovery, most likely, wanted you to provide them with more personal information than would normally be required in any prize draw anywhere in the world.

You can protect yourself from similar [Twitter] scams in the future by doing as much research as you can. Use tools to help you, here are a few suggestions:

Do they link to a web-site in their Twitter bio? It’s very easy to create a Twitter account and “go”. Creating a full web-site with contact details, legalese, etc. is another matter all together.

Use Twitter Search to see what everybody else is saying about a Twitter user – if most of the @wp_discovery followers did this, they’d never have followed them in the first place.

Use Bing, Google or your favourite search engine – although the results will include more than just Twitter and may include sites that aggregate Twitter content making it hard to “see the wood for the trees”

Use linguistic analysis – look at the grammar usage, use of contractions (“it is” and “it’s”). If they link to third-party sites, compare the writing style. Consider small things like the orientation of smilies “:-)” vs “(-:”. There are lots of small clues to be found in careful analysis of the language constructs and word selections!

Use screenshots to help gather information. There are lots of [free] tools that can grab your screen automatically – these are great if you need to capture follows, unfollows or tweets that may have been deleted, etc. I’ve used TimeSnapper in the past – there’s a free version available.

There are plenty of other tools that you can use, feel free to share any that you find useful in the comments below.

Apologies folks – I have taken the podcasts folder offline. It seems that the .mp3’s were being enjoying abnormal demand over the past 7-8 days…too much for human consumption, so I can only assume it’s an automated process that’s consuming more than my fair share of bandwidth.

I need to start writing more. I used to be a prolific writer. I’m going to write these monthly posts as a means of getting me writing again. Apologies if you find them dull, however I need something to kick-start me!

November was a busy month. So busy, I had pretty much written it off within the first week of the month. Work-wise, I had a handful of site visits to make to the east of Glasgow. Couple that with a couple of trips out to getting the car serviced and its suspension repaired (Edinburgh’s roads are in a dire state of disrepair), it rather felt like a month where I never actually stopped.

12th through to 16th
We managed a short break at Centre Parcs in the north of England. I say break, I really mean three days (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday) – the Monday and Friday are typically spent loading/unloading the car and driving to/from the resort. Loading and unloading the car, especially with the roofbox, is quite frankly, a chore and not something I would class as a holiday activity.

On the plus side, I did manage to try a couple of things: a Segway and tree-trekking. The latter I had done before some 20 years ago. The Segway was new and was rather cool; sadly not road legal!

17th – DunDDD
I don’t often get to sit through a whole session end-to-end, however I managed it for a number of sessions at DunDDD. I pleased to be able to sit through these sessions: Steven Clarke’s “How do you combine user experience and developer tools?”, Gary Short’s “Marginal Gains – Bringing UK Cycling Success to Your Dev. Team”, Seb Rose’s “Bad Test, Good Test” and Gary Short’s “Not Everything is an object”.

29th and 30th – Bletchley Park
Towards the end of the month, the Microsoft MVP Open Day took place at Bletchley Park near Milton Keynes. I drove down, via Newcastle and Sunderland, picking up Jon Noble and Andy Westgarth on the way. It was an early start on the Thursday, I left Fife at 0500 on the Thursday. Despite that, it took me a good three and a bit hours to get to Cullercoats near Newcastle. After a short stop in Sunderland to top up the travel mug, we headed south and made it to Milton Keynes in the nick of time.

A school friend has made me aware of this position in Glasgow. If you are interested in applying for this role, drop me an e-mail (address on the right hand side) or reply to me on Twitter (@camurphy) and I’ll put you in touch with my school friend!

Senior Games Programmer / Games Developer with high level of proficiency with C++, STL and OOP is required by a well established games company.

Games Programmer / Games Developer Key Skills

High level of proficiency with C++, STL and OOP

Solid code architecture and planning skills

Exceptional communication and team working skills

The Experienced Game Programmer will work to bring latest games to completion on a number of current and next-gen platforms. Candidates must be passionate about gaming and ideally have experience with handheld and/or mobile platforms and a deep interest in games in general and racing games in particular.

As a member of a highly talented team you will work with the Lead Programmer, Producer and game team to implement game features, optimise code and algorithms as well as platform specific requirements. You are expected to use your solid industry knowledge to help establish the perfect balance between quality and scope.

Qualifications

BS in Computer Science or other suitable degree preferred

Professional experience working in video game development

Experience

A minimum of 5 years of professional video games programming experience

Credited on at least 2 published video games in a Programmer or Senior Programmer role

Experience through a full development cycle and certification submission on at least one HD console game

TL;DR summaryshopa needs your help making it bigger and better! Click here, then vote! Thanks!

About shopa
shopa is a social technology company that enables risk-free word of mouth sales growth for independent businesses who sell products and services online.

Customers of online retailers using shopa’s ‘share & earn’ tool can receive cash incentives for recommending products. Customers can easily share products they like with friends and if any of them buy, they both share an instant cash reward. shopa’s retail partner’s benefit from a network of personal recommendations.

The shopa team, led by Peter Janes, has built the clever technology with limited resources and they have already caught the attention of major companies as well as angel investors who invested in the business in August.

But shopa is not just about the product; there is heavy emphasis on monetising data. The team has access to valuable behavioural data, which will further help clients to understand the behaviour of customers through the use of powerful analytics.

The business has recently been granted a patent in the US as well as a global technical partnership with eBay and its companies PayPal and Magento to continue their progress.

September
First up, September sees Andrew Westgarth, the principle organiser of DDD North and the co-founder of the NEBytes user group, visit Edinburgh to talk about IIS 8. Andrew’s a great speaker and is very knowledgeable on this subject. If you need to learn more about Microsoft’s IIS web server, this is the event for you!

Later in October, Chris Canal, waxes lyrical about Single Page Web Applications – are they the next big thing? Come along on the 9th of October and find out from Chris! Given that this Manning book is still on the Manning Early Access Programme, I’m very keen to hear what Chris has to say! Chris is a great speaker to boot!

November
Lastly, November sees the return of the “mini DDD” that is DunDDD…being held in Dundee, oddly enough. The call for speakers is open and will remain open until early November. If you’d like to register to attend DunDDD, registration will open on Monday 24th September.

Linknode deliver software solutions and support to a range of prestigious clients on web and mobile platforms. With new projects planned on mobile devices, we have an opportunity for a software engineer to join our growing team offering solutions across platforms.

As an established, sound and successful organisation, Linknode offer the successful candidate a competitive package, a challenging and rewarding team role and the opportunity to work with a range of cutting edge technology. Engineers in the company benefit from the flat structure within the organisation, designed to create organic growth, encourage input and personal interest and to reward performance – if you do well in this company there are great opportunities to accelerate your career and salary as well as develop your skills.

Role
This position at Linknode is positioned under the Technical Architect and Director as a senior software engineer delivering a roadmap of projects across multiple platforms. Primarily as an Android developer working in C# using Mono and MonoGame, you will be focussed on providing location based, personalised applications taking full advantage of the hardware sensors on Android devices.
Working with the architect, you will help define and deliver the technical architecture required to make location based, personalised applications work across multiple platforms.
As a more senior role, you will be expected to mentor and support the more junior members of the team.

You
The successful candidate will be a motivated software engineer / developer, educated to Computer Science or equivalent degree level. You will have a solid software development background and hands-on commercial experience. Having successful delivered Android projects is preferred.
You must have demonstrable skills in creating Android user interfaces and layout (ideally using C# and Mono). You will have knowledge of modern mobile communication technologies (REST, JSON, XML etc.) and experience of test driven development.
Experience of other mobile platform development is desirable, as is geospatial awareness, project design and management and practical experience of working directly with customers.

Location
The position is located in central Stirling. There will be occasional requirements to travel and work onsite, including overnight when required, a full UK driving licence is essential.

Contact
Prospective candidates should reply in the first instance (by email to info@ANDROIDlinknode.co.uk, remove the mobile operating system) with an up-to-date CV plus an introductory paragraph – specific to this application – outlining your reasons for applying and quoting reference “ln_ssea_201209”.

Any agencies replying on behalf of clients are, by reading this advert and responding directly with their candidates, accepting that any terms and conditions will not exceed 10% of starting salary and be payable 30 days after any successful candidate has completed one full month of employment.

With the rise of smarter browser, single page applications are becoming more popular. In this session we will look at creating a full client side application with and without backbone.js, and use Simple.Web to run the server-side part of the application.

Simple.Web
A lightweight, object-oriented (Model-View-Handler) framework for modern web development in .NET

Simple.Web Design Goals

Keep it simple;

It should be ridiculously easy to do TDD and/or BDD;

Support asynchronous, non-blocking handling of requests;

Make it easy to build a proper RESTful, hypermedia-driven application and services, including supporting content-type negotiation for all requests, including HTML;

Be really open and extensible, because if people can write plug-ins and add-ons easily, I don’t have to build all that stuff in.

Backbone.js
Backbone.js gives structure to web applications by providing models with key-value binding and custom events, collections with a rich API of enumerable functions, views with declarative event handling, and connects it all to your existing API over a RESTful JSON interface.

About the speaker
Chris has worked at a Web Developer for the past 7 years. Starting with procedural languages like ASP and PHP, he quickly moved onto the .NET Platform when first released. A great believer is continual–improvement, Chris is constantly looking for new technologies, tools and methodologies that will help in creating robust and maintainable software applications.

Chris currently works at StormId as a Senior Developer and Mentor, as well as trying to keep his manager from doing something crazy.

Scottish Developers are very pleased to announce that Microsoft’s General Manager for the Visual Studio leadership team will be delivering a presentation at Microsoft’s Edinburgh office on the 1st of October!

This is a special event that celebrates the launch of Visual Studio 2012.

To compliment the launch of Visual Studio 2012 on the 12th September we are running a series of RoadShow events and dropping in on 4 cities in 5 days. We’d love for you to come and join us at some of these events. We will be joined by Shanku Niyogi who’s team have been instrumental in the creation of the product and he will own the testing elements of Visual Studio moving forward.

At each location we will be joined by some of our strategic partners (BlackMarble and SQS) who will bring some “real world” experience by talking about new areas of the products and how they are applying the tools.

This post relates to the afternoon sessions running from 1300 through to 1700. Shanku is also presenting at the community launch in the early evening at the same location, where there will be beer, pizza and swag!

About the speakerShanku Niyogi leads the team responsible for testing the next generation of Microsoft’s developer tools, including the Visual Studio product line and the .NET Framework. Most recently, as Director of Program Management, Shanku led the design team for Visual Studio Pro and Express, developer tools for platforms such as Windows, Office, and Azure, and managed and JavaScript programming languages.

Shanku joined the Visual Studio leadership team as GM in 2008, and delivered the first set of Visual Studio tools for Azure, and the Chakra Javascript runtime in Internet Explorer. Previously, Shanku had been a part of the .NET Developer Platform organization for nearly seven years, where he helped ship several version of ASP.NET, and helped incubate technologies such as ASP.NET AJAX, ASP.NET MVC, WCF RIA Services for Silverlight, and ASP.NET Mobile Controls. Shanku has been with Microsoft since 2008. Shanku holds a Bachelor of Mathematics degree in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo.